The Book of Lost Friends(63)
“I’ll pull your little skinny arms off your body first.”
“These have been read previously by the people coming here.” She stands holding them by the stove. “And when we finish reading them, we will leave them with people who, perhaps, have not yet seen them. Would they not be of greater use there?”
I can’t argue against that, and part of me don’t want to, so I let it be.
We’re gone long before middle morning comes, and they’ll see we’ve left one of Missy’s dollar coins for the use of their church house…and for the papers.
We make a sight, traveling down the road, all three of us dressed in too-big britches. Juneau Jane’s got her long hair stuffed down the back of her shirt to hide it. Missy Lavinia’s feet dangle bare and pink while I ride behind her on Ginger. Old Missus would be up on her shoutin’ bench about those feet and ankles showing, if she could see. But Young Missy don’t say a thing, just hangs on and stares off into the woods, her face as pale and blank as the little patch of gray-blue sky up above the road.
I’m beginning to wonder, why hadn’t she come back to her mind, started talking again, like Juneau Jane? Is Missy gone for good? Is that bump on Missy’s head the difference, or does Juneau Jane just carry a stronger will?
Up ahead, Juneau Jane talks in French to her horse, laying over his mane with her arms strung along his neck.
When we stop in the afternoon for water and food, and to rest the horses, I come back out of the woods after my necessary, and there’s Juneau Jane with the skinning knife in one hand and a hank of something black in the other. All round her, like the wool sheared off a sheep, lays that long dark hair. She’s sitting in a nest of it, one side of her head looking like a shaggy baby bird’s. Maybe her mind’s not so much healed as I thought.
Missy Lavinia is sprawled out nearby, her eyes shifting up and down a little, lazy-like, watching that knife do its deed.
First thing that goes through my thoughts is, Old Missus would have a fit about this, Hannie. You turned your back, left the child alone with a knife. It’s never the child’s fault for doing bad. It’ll be your fault for not watching closer. You’re the nursemaid.
I remind myself that I ain’t, and Juneau Jane ain’t my trouble, but still, I say, “What’d you do that for? Old Missus…” It’s halfway out of my mouth before I remember that Old Missus would flick this child off her porch like a tick. Squash her twixt two fingernails. “Could’ve just kept it tucked up under your hat till you get home. Your mama won’t like what you done. Your papa, either, when he comes back. Reason he always loved you best, is you always was a pretty little thing.”
She goes right on with her business.
“And he’ll come back, you just watch. If them bad men told you he was gone for good, they just lied because Missy paid them to. Bad men lie easy as breathin’. And your papa won’t like that…what you’re doing.”
Even I know that the only thing this girl’s got of value is the way she looks. Her mama will be watching for a man with money who’s interested in the girl. Ain’t as many of them as there used to be, but there’s still some. In the old days, they’d be trotting this child out at the quadroon balls by now, letting her get seen by all the rich planters and their sons. They’d be having conversations, working out a bargain with a man who’d keep her for hisself, but couldn’t ever marry her, even if he wanted.
“Take a long time for hair like that to grow back.”
She stares right through me, whacks off the hank in her fist, tosses it down like it’s the head of a snake, keeps right on. Grab, pull, cut. Must hurt, but she’s stony as them carved lions that sat on the gateposts at Goswood Grove before the war. “I’ll not be returning. Not until I’ve found Father, or the proof of my inheritance.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“I have decided to go to Texas.”
“Texas?” That settles my question of this girl’s mind. “How’re you getting to Texas? And once you’re there, where you plan to find your papa? Texas is a big place. You ever seen any of it? Because, I been there when Old Mister took us refugee. Texas is a wild land, full with rough men, and Indians that’ll cut that hair off your head for you, and the skin with it.”
A shudder runs through me, end to end. I remember Texas, and not in any good way I can think of. Not going back there. Ever.
But something else whispers in me, too: Texas is where some of your people was carried off to. Where you left Mama.
“My mother received word from Papa upon his arrival at the river port of Jefferson, Texas. He had engaged his solicitor there to defend the Gossett properties nearby, which her brother”—she gives a shrug toward Missy Lavinia, to let me know we’re talking about young Mister Lyle now; just the mention of that boy darkens my mind—“had unlawfully sold. Those lands are my inheritance, and Papa’s intent was that, once a settlement was reached in the lawsuit, the proceeds would be transferred to me, so as to assure my provision. The solicitor was to dispense with the legal matter immediately and if possible cause Lyle to return to Jefferson, that our papa might take him in hand. In his letter, Papa spoke with great concern of Lyle’s rash behavior and the company he had been keeping of late.”
I get a shiver, a bad feel. “Did your money come? Or word from Old Gossett that he’d got a hand on his son?”